Six Apart and Vox—How Promise Gets Squandered

September 3rd, 2010
Six Apart is shutting down its free blogging service, Vox, and as Mike points out this announcement is really about cleaning up for an upcoming merger with VideoEgg. With 250 million uniques worldwide spread across thousands of blogs and a growing ad business, Six Apart isn’t a failure. But, like Slide and … Read More

Flick this! Croke puts Crokinole on the iPhone

September 3rd, 2010
Crokinole is a beautiful, simple game with a long history. In the tradition of pool and Carrom, Crokinole is a dexterity game that pits two (or four) people against each other around a circular wooden board. Players try to flick little wooden discs towards the center, knocking out opponent’s discs if they’re … Read More

Engadget’s back to school guide: Printers

September 3rd, 2010
Welcome to Engadget’s Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we’re here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. Today, we’ve got printers in our sights — and you can head to … Read More

Google To Update, Shorten And De-Jargon Privacy Policies – Here’s What’s Changing

September 3rd, 2010
Mike Yang, Google’s Associate General Counsel, just published a post on the Google blog, informing users that the company is making its privacy policies shorter and easier to understand for non-lawyers. They are also making some other changes, but to be clear, the Mountain View company isn’t altering its privacy practices as … Read More

How Apple’s newest iPods prove (and disprove) that it learns from design mistakes

September 3rd, 2010
When Apple released the third-generation iPod shuffle in 2009, I saw it as a perfect example of the design hubris that many Apple detractors point to. From a usability perspective, there really wasn’t anything wrong with the second-generation iPod shuffle — it had a minimal number of buttons, true, but their functions … Read More

New Jersey transit looks to add WiFi to its rail lines and stations, New Yorkers to pretend they didn’t hear that

September 3rd, 2010
A New Jersey Transit spokesperson has announced that its seeking a company to install WiFi on its rail lines and at its train stations. The installation would make New Jersey one of the few major transit systems in the country to have WiFi on its 165 stations and 12 lines. The spokesperson … Read More

Shazam Launches Major Updates To iPhone app, Now On 20m Users

September 3rd, 2010
Music identification app Shazam has announced big feature updates to its iPhone and iPod touch music discovery apps.

There are now customised settings for ‘tagging on start-up’ make the process of identifying a music track faster, a new UI, the ability to search for ringtones and videos on iTunes and better video. You … Read More

Apple awarded new patents

September 3rd, 2010
This past week, Apple had a host of new patents officially approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office. From streamlining the way images are rendered to preventing the accidental opening of applications, a large chunk of the patents seem to relate to the ways that a user interacts with a device. … Read More

Guitar Sidekick brings your phone to your guitar, while your guitar gently weeps

September 3rd, 2010
You may not want to be seen rocking one of these at your next gig, but if you’ve been trying to juggle your phone and guitar while using some of the endless number of apps out there, you might just want to consider this so-called Guitar Sidekick from Castiv. As you can … Read More

The Samsung Galaxy Tab Can Set Its Own Price, No Need To Directly Compete With The iPad’s $500 Price

September 3rd, 2010
The Samsung Galaxy Tab is going to sell well. It won’t be a blockbuster like the iPad, but it should still do alright mainly because it’s the first consumer-worthy Android tablet. Samsung can even price the tablet well north of the iPad’s $500 starting price. It will not matter. People will buy … Read More